Seeking Sanctuary

by Annie Anderson

  “I had Noah do a preliminary scan of Isla’s SUV before the state boys got their hooks into it. He says the brake line looked tampered with.”

  “You don’t think…” my father started but trailed off.

  “Pippa.” Orin’s one-word reply was exactly the name I did not want to hear.

  “Are you fucking serious? Pippa’s been gone for months.” A part of me didn’t want to think of it as a possibility, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered.

  “Unless you know of another person in this town who Isla has pissed off enough to cut her freaking brakes, I’m all ears. Although, I suppose whatever brought her here could be the culprit,” he reasoned, thinking out loud.

  “I doubt it.” The muttered scoff was something I didn’t plan to say, but it slipped out nonetheless.

  “What makes you so sure?” Orin laser-locked on my face, his cop stare the same one he used on me when we were kids, and he suspected I’d stolen his favorite G.I. Joe.

  I debated on what to tell him. First, it wasn’t my place, and second, he was the law. But I knew my brother. I knew his stance on self-defense and justifiable homicide. I also knew his tenacity.

  “He’s dead,” I whispered, leveling my eyes at him.

  The light dawned in Orin’s gaze, but he didn’t say another word about Isla’s other life, he just carried on. “Good for her. Then my first assessment stands. Pippa.”

  “I’d have to agree. You didn’t see the light in her eyes when she went into that bathroom, Levi. She went in there for the singular purpose of hurting our girl. Make no mistake about that.” Constance’s voice was the clear balm of reason, and I knew without a doubt she was right.

  But we were hamstrung by the lack of report. I knew it, and Orin knew it.

  “I can’t do anything officially about it, but I can put out some feelers, see if I can pin down her location. If she’s in Vermont like she’s supposed to be, then we need to look somewhere else. If she’s not, well…”

  Even I didn’t know what to do if she wasn’t in Vermont like she was supposed to be. A part of me didn’t believe Pippa was capable of something like this. The other part was smart enough to put two and two together.

  But all of this was a distraction for the real reason I was in this room. Because I was still waiting for word on Isla. Pippa, the wreck, none of it mattered unless I knew she was safe.

  22

  ISLA

  The incessant beep of a machine filtered into my brain, the noise pinging like a goddamn pinball in my skull. I felt like hammered shit. Absolutely everything hurt. My head, my skin, my whole freaking body felt like it had been churned through a meat grinder and spit out with only half my parts. Even the groan hissing from my lips hurt.

  Jesus, what happened to me?

  “Isla? Sugar?” Levi’s voice was the only good thing right now. “I’m going to need you to open your eyes. Can you do that for me?” The pleading in his voice hurting my heart.

  I tried. I really did, but my eyelids seemed to have been replaced with lead weights, and the room was too bright.

  “Bright,” I croaked doing my level best to not scream when fire shot down my throat. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph what the fucking fuck happened to me?

  The accident. The brakes. I couldn’t stop…

  The baby.

  My baby. My breaths sped up, and I moved my hands to try and check my belly. But only one of them seemed to be working right. Beeps got faster, but soon Levi’s hands were on me, calming me.

  “Shh, Sugar. Your daughter is as strong as an ox. She’s staying put for a little while longer, don’t you worry.”

  “Daughter?” I rasped, the fire in my throat worth it this time. A little girl. I was having a little girl.

  “Yep. Now, don’t get mad, but I lied to the doctor and told them I was the baby’s father. That was pretty much the only way I was getting in here. They barred everyone else. Even Orin, and while that was funny as hell, I’d live my whole life without doing that again.”

  I wasn’t even remotely mad. Not even a little. I may have wondered if the implications of him saying that were true – there was a strange dip in my belly whenever I thought about him sticking around, being with us for the long haul – but I didn’t want to press him.

  In my life, pressing didn’t do me a lick of good.

  The light seemed to dim behind my eyelids, and I took a cautious peek at my surroundings. I was in a hospital room. Not big or small, but definitely high tech. I was half sitting up, and leads were coming from my chest, my belly, my right hand. I inspected the substantial cast on my left arm. It went from elbow to the base of my fingers. Levi must have told them my favorite color because the plaster was a gorgeous plum.

  Then he came into focus. Levi ran a hand through his dark hair, and I could tell he’d done that many, many times in the last however long I’d been here. His jaw, which was usually scruffy, was sporting a fuck of a lot more fuzz than usual. His eyes were tired, and I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him waiting on me. I knew if the situation were reversed, I’d be an absolute mess.

  “What’s wrong with me?” That whole sentence was enough to elicit a whimper. Levi poured some water into a cup for me, helping me sit up a bit more to drink it before answering. God, he smelled good. Even stressed out, even with everything, all I wanted to do was hug the shit out of him.

  “Broken ulna, concussion, broken ribs, some cuts, a shit ton of bruises…” I didn’t give a shit about any of that. I cared about one thing and one thing only.

  “The baby?” I broke in after taking a healthy swig of ice-cold water.

  “She’s looking good. They were worried there for a hot minute because you went into preterm labor, but they got it stopped. You were bleeding a little, but that seems to have calmed down. I talked to the doctor already, and you’re not going to like this, but you’re probably going to have to be on bed rest for a little while if not the rest of your pregnancy. The doc can explain it better than I can, but the man saved your life, so if you’re going to lose it, I want you to lose it on me.”

  Bed rest. Who gave a shit about bed rest? Would it keep my daughter inside me long enough so she was fully cooked? Fucking sold.

  “I’m not going to lose it. If the doctor says that is the best way to get my daughter into the world safely, then you won’t hear a peep from me.”

  LEVI

  Famous last words.

  I knew it was too good to be true. I knew there was absolutely no way in hell Isla would sit down for the next twenty weeks and chill out. It didn’t matter that she had every single book under the sun or enough channels to liquefy her brain. Isla Young wasn’t meant to be lazy.

  “I take it back. You cannot under any circumstances whatsoever use my pots,” she yelled from the couch, her brand-new tablet on her belly as she glared at me. All I was doing was stirring a pot of soup.

  Who fucks up soup?

  Isla stayed at St. Luke’s for a week before the doctors were comfortable with her leaving. The doc did indeed put her on bedrest but also pulled me aside to let me know that upsetting events could cause preterm labor. I was to keep her comfortable and calm at all costs.

  I didn’t know how that was supposed to be possible, but we made due. Or we had so far.

  Isla was still in a fair amount of pain, and since she couldn’t use ibuprofen or pretty much any other painkiller due to the pregnancy, she was shit out of luck and uncomfortable. I’d propped her up with every pillow under the sun to keep her comfy, but the necessity to pee roughly three thousand times a day made that practically impossible. It had been almost two weeks, and she was already climbing the walls. Constance, my dad, and even Avery took turns keeping an eye on Isla during the day while I was at work, and I took over after, moving myself into Isla’s house with very little lip.

  Okay, there was a lot of lip. I was pretty sure Isla’s daughter was learning the word ‘fuck’ in utero, but it didn’t matter to me. I
was staying here where Isla was comfortable. I was keeping her safe and cared for, goddammit, no matter what the little hellion said.

  The kicker was when I had Constance go maternity clothes shopping for her. Sweet mother of all that is holy, Isla about had a shit fit. Well, she did until Constance had her try on the sleepwear and leggings and maternity dresses. And the bras that actually fit. Isla about cried in relief and hugged Constance so hard I thought she’d break something.

  So far, Constance and takeout had been our primary source of sustenance, and since I was trying to not be a no talent ass clown in the kitchen, I was taking baby steps and warming up soup.

  “Seriously. Turn the burner off and step away from the two-hundred-dollar saucepan,” Isla said slowly as if she were in the middle of a hostage negotiation. I suspect since I was potentially about to kill one of her pots, she was close to right.

  “It’s soup. Who fucks up soup?” I repeated my earlier thought aloud.

  Isla leveled me with a look so scathing I physically felt it across the room. Okay, so I had charred toast this morning, and maybe I forgot that the timer was actually for something and turned it off without pulling the muffins from the oven, but I was learning, dammit.

  “I’ll have you know, I followed the directions. It says to warm on medium heat until hot. I have the dial turned to the middle and everything, and the soup isn’t even steaming.”

  “Do you have the right burner on?” she asked, her voice masking a giggle, but the smile was still stretched across her face. I hadn’t seen that too many times to not have it hit me in the gut. But then her words filtered in through my loved-up haze. I spun back to look at the burners.

  Well, shit. I didn’t. Maybe I’d better stick to the microwave, I thought as I turned the burner off.

  I didn’t even hear the blow coming my way. I didn’t even register Isla’s scream until it was too late.

  All I felt was the blistering agony, and then it was lights out.

  23

  ISLA

  “He was mine!” Pippa screeched at me as she dragged me barefoot through the dying brush toward the trees at the edge of Levi’s property. If it weren’t for the gun in her hand, I would have told her to fuck off, but as it stood, I had a deranged woman in sweatpants dragging me through the fucking forest.

  I’d tried to warn Levi, tried to tell him, but my words were too late. Pippa soundlessly yanked one of my cast iron pans off the island and swung it at Levi’s head.

  God, Levi.

  Just the thought of him hurting made me more than a little hysterical. That thought made me want to cry, to scream, to drag my feet. But I was already dragging my feet slower than she wanted, and the stinging slap to my face was enough to get me moving. I didn’t know if her next blow would be in the form of a bullet and I couldn’t risk it.

  I wasn’t even sure how she’d come to be in the kitchen in the first place. It was as if she came out of fucking nowhere. I’d thought the house was secure, but I guessed not since I was trudging through the goddamn forest.

  A part of me knew that this walk wasn’t going to work out well for me no matter how fast I moved. Pippa had a gun in her hand. She didn’t use it on Levi – a small favor – but I had no question she’d have any hesitation to use it on me.

  I should have called Smitty. I should have told him everything that had happened here, everything she’d done. Maybe if I did, Levi wouldn’t be unconscious on the kitchen floor, and I wouldn’t be here with her.

  “You just couldn’t fucking die, could you?” she raved, her face a mask of tears. “It was bad enough I had to deal with Levi making a fool of me in town – throwing me out of his house. The idiot. I didn’t want to be with him – not really. I just needed a place to stay. Levi isn’t like Orin. He was supposed to give a shit about me. Why didn’t he give a shit about me?”

  She wasn’t making any sense, her voice thick from crying and anger. I almost wanted to help her, the way she was raving. She needed help, without question, but I didn’t know if I was qualified to give it to her.

  “Why did you need a place to stay?” The question popped out of my mouth without thought.

  That made her stop and look at me, really look. Her eyes cleared for a second before the clouds in them rolled right back in.

  “Everyone in this town loved my father. Said he was a good, upstanding man with honest values,” she sneered. “They didn’t know him like I did. They didn’t know how he hurt me. They didn’t know what kind of man he really was.” The look on her face was one I’d seen in the mirror many times before. The bald, haunted look of a woman who had been abused more times than she could count. Someone who had seen the edge of her sanity. Unfortunately for Pippa, she found the edge and then surpassed it.

  I remembered Levi saying once that Hank liked him better than his own daughter. I didn’t think if he knew what was going on – if he knew what was happening to her – he would have boasted such a fact. It seemed like Hank either hated his daughter or loved her a little too much. Either way, Pippa was a form of broken I had experience with.

  “He abused you. Hit you? Raped you? Molested you? And you killed him, right? That day you cornered me in the diner. You’d killed your father.”

  She seemed surprised I’d figured it out, or maybe she was surprised I was compassionate.

  “Yes. To all of it.”

  “And you hated me because I took away your out. If you were dating Levi, a man your father liked, you could move out from under his thumb without a second thought, right?” Guessing her motives because they were once mine too. How pissed was I when I’d seen those escrow numbers? How desperate was I when I saw the window of my escape closing like a fist around me? She saw me as the enemy even though I wasn’t one because I was stealing her sanctuary.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice almost relieved someone – anyone – knew. We weren’t walking anymore, the truth halting us in the middle of the woods, the silence of our feet no longer crunching through the leaves almost deafening.

  She had to know. Maybe if she knew we weren’t that different, she’d see. Maybe she’d let me go. It was a silly hope, but it was all I had.

  “I killed the man who beat me,” I admitted, the sting of it lessening each time I said it out loud. Cole was going to kill me. I knew it, and saving myself wasn’t wrong. “Stabbed him with a letter opener and ran. Your abuser is dead, Pippa. He can’t touch you anymore. I’m not stealing your escape; you’ve already found it. You don’t need to hurt Levi, and you don’t need to kill me. You’re free already.”

  Pippa let my wrist go, as she wiped the tears from her face, her expression hardening. “But don’t you see? You know, and that's the problem.”

  Was she nuts? Okay, yes, she was probably nuts.

  “Why? It isn't like I would say anything. You endured enough. I just want to know why you tried to kill me. Why you would hurt me when I’m carrying a child.”

  She took a stutter step backward as if my words were a slap. “I didn't. I would never,” she breathed, her voice shocked somehow.

  Now I was pissed. “You cut my brakes. I damn near flew off the side of a cliff. If that isn't trying to kill me, I don't know what is.”

  “I didn't do that. Maybe I messed with your lug nuts a little, but I could barely get one of them off. And I watched Levi tighten them all. I didn’t touch your brakes. You think that I'm capable of killing a pregnant woman?”

  “Well, no offense, you're dragging a pregnant, barefoot woman through the woods with a gun in your hand.”

  Pippa looked down as if she was just now realizing she still had a gun in her hand. “That doesn't matter. I'm not a monster. I just wanted you to leave.”

  “But why? Your dad is dead. I'm not a threat.”

  “Because he was supposed to be mine,” she insisted.

  “Only to use. Never to keep. You never wanted him. You just wanted safety. You have it. Go live your life with someone you can actually stand because I know y
ou and Levi practically hate each other.”

  Pippa looked at me as if I grew another head, shuffling her feet in the fallen leaves like an irritated horse. “You want me to let you go? And I'm just supposed to assume the cops won't be showing up at my doorstep?”

  “You aren't the only one who killed to get out of a horrible situation. You aren't the only one who killed to save herself. Who the hell am I going to tell?”

  “Fine. But that doesn't mean we're friends.”

  “Of course not. Tough to be friends with the person holding a gun on you.”

  For some reason, I believed Pippa when she said she didn’t mess with my brakes, that she didn’t try to kill me. But if she didn’t, then who did?

  I had a feeling I knew, but my brain wouldn’t reconcile the feeling with what I knew to be true.

  “You said you watched Levi tighten my lug nuts. That means you were there, watching us. Did you see anyone else? Someone you don’t know?” I asked, this time it was me latching onto her wrist.

  “Not at the house, but… in town. I saw a man watching the shop, watching the front window. I didn’t see him mess with the car, but he…” She trailed off, shaking her head, and a pit of dread yawned wide underneath me. It felt as if I was falling even though I was standing on solid ground.

  “He, what?” I whispered.

  “He made calls, while he watched the shop, and the look on his face was the same one my father wore right before he did something that hurt.”

  My voice trembled as I asked, “Wh-what did he look like?”

  Pippa focused – really focused on me then. “Dark hair, tall, green eyes I think.”

  Cole.

  The world spun as a fire erupted in my chest. Then it was Pippa holding onto me. Telling me to breathe. Telling me to sit down on a fallen log.

  I didn’t kill him. Why didn’t I kill him? I should have checked for a pulse. I should have made sure he was dead.